There you go, Sage! Good news for once. People are warned all the time about roping up on a glacier, but he went alone. Should have killed him, but he got lucky. I don't know how this guy did it!

I had a friend die when he fell into a crevasse on a glacier - he died of hypothermia before the SARs could get him out. The fact that he was sandwiched front and back by ice meant he couldn't possibly stay warm for very long. And he was wearing full winter ski gear!

I went to grad school with a guy that lost all his fingers and toes after being upside down in a crevasee on Mt St Elias. He was roped up and did all the right things. Snow and ice are not for the faint of heart. I used to talk with guys on Monday mornings that climbed moutains in the North Cascades on weekends in the winter and named them after themselves.

I went to grad school with a guy that lost all his fingers and toes after being upside down in a crevasee on Mt St Elias...

I think your friend's ordeal was more than a crevasse slip. A competent team should be able to extricate a climber before he freezes his digits. Mt St Elias is not a particularly enticing mountain to climb. It may be the among the tallest rocks in North America, but its proximity to the coast gives it especially temperamental weather, and is the chief reason why it is only occasionally climbed. We tried following the Washburn route in the early 1980s - a relatively non technical climb - but found the snow too deep, the weather relentless, and never got above 12K'. We abandoned the climb when it became difficult to maintain sensation in our limbs. We spent too many days in tents and caves, and were running low on provisions. Made me home sick for my recliner and fire place.